Of the four million Syrians who have fled their war-torn country in recent years, at least 135,000 of them require immediate resettlement. But America has absorbed fewer than 1,000. For Jewish activists pushing the government to shift gears, that feeble number and the accompanying bottleneck in resettlement of Syrian refugees are troubling reminders of their…
Jurors began deliberations Wednesday afternoon on whether gay conversion therapy constitutes fraud. The verdict comes after the close of a three-week trial that has drawn national attention to so-called “ex-gay” or “gay conversion” therapy, which aims to turn gay people straight using some highly controversial techniques. Although gay-to-straight conversion therapy was most prevalent in evangelical…
Mary McGowan Davis, the American judge who led the independent United Nations probe into the events of last summer’s war in Gaza, said the main message committee members wanted to transmit is that Israel must reexamine its policy of using its military might against civilians, because it led to unprecedented destruction in Gaza and to…
Democrats, who are looking to take back control of the Senate in 2016, have focused on a state that might seem implausible at first glance as a litmus test for their goal: Wisconsin. But the state that elected archconservative Scott Walker as governor in 2010, re-elected him in 2014 and decisively rejected a grassroots effort…
Rabbi Marc Mandel’s voice filled Touro Synagogue one recent Saturday morning, drifting past the wooden columns that line the basilica and rising toward the women’s gallery, just as the voices of baalei tefillah, or prayer leaders, did 250 years ago. Tourists stream through this, the oldest synagogue in America, five days a week. But it…
The brutal shooting of on Wednesday night has stunned Charleston’s Jewish community. “We’re always on alert when there’s a hate act,” said Judi Corsaro, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Charleston, South Carolina, adding that there was very little reason for the Jewish community to suspect a rise in anti-Semitism. Last night, she said, was…
If you thought you knew where Chuck Schumer, the powerful U.S. senator from New York, stood on the impeding nuclear deal with Iran, think again. “The decision about Iran is one of the most serious I’ve had to make,” he told activists from the Orthodox Union who gathered on Capitol Hill on June 3 for…
Days after Jihadi insurgents in Syria slaughtered at least 20 Druze citizens not far from Israel’s border in mid-June, residents of Hurfeish, a village in Northern Israel, streamed to their town square on foot, horseback and bicycle, waving the bright rainbow flag of their religious sect, pledging to save their brethren. Fearing a looming genocide,…
The scene at the town hall in the village of Cabot, Vermont last summer was chaotic: First came a question about Israel’s ongoing bombings in Gaza; then an interruption from audience members angry at Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Another interruption followed. And then, onstage, Senator Bernie Sanders, sleeves rolled to his elbows, shouted at…
A bill to appoint an overseer over an Orthodox-dominated New York school board appears to be on the brink of failure, despite the backing of New York’s governor, the chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, the Rockland County Legislature, and a handful of advocacy groups. The bill’s expected defeat, which comes amid…
Embattled Rabbi Marc Schneier is now claiming that the Rabbinical Council of America, Orthodox Judaism’s top rabbinical association, reneged on an arrangement he had reached with them in its decision to expel him due to an extramarital affair he had with a congregant. “This is a set-up, my friend. I feel betrayed and violated,” Schneier…
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